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June 14, 2014

I was invited to two weddings in may, and on one of the invitations there was written "black tie" for the evening part, so I needed a dress. As it was a wedding, black wasn't an option, and I wanted to have it knee length, too. And I had to be fast as there wasn't much time (although I have to say that buying one would not have been quicker). So I went with a variation of a pattern I've already sewn before.

As for the bodice, I did not have enough time to add boning all around as I did for my Vienna gala dress with all the additional work that means. I was worried, though, that the back would crinkle or collapse as it is attached to the shoulder straps on very small points near the center back, so I added some spiral steel boning to the side seams and vertical back seams, while using the seam allowances of the lining as boning cases.

The fabric is silk dupioni, which is a dream to work with, apart from that it frays like nothing. On some parts, my seam allowances were reduced to about half the width after trying on the dress one single time!

March 30, 2014

I'm in love with this pattern since I found it on Etsy! And now that dress finally became reality.
The pattern size was too big for me, so I had to grade it down. I also thought that it would be more practical to have 3/4-sleeves instead of short ones, so I drafted my own sleeve according to the Swiss pattern making system. Of course I had to make a muslin, and there were quite some changes to do:

First of all, the bodice was too long (no surprise here).
The shoulders appeared to be too wide in the beginning, but in fact there was also too much room in the front bodice, and after pinning out the excess fabric, the shoulders were in the right place, too.
The vertical folds on the upper sleeve indicate that the sleeve cap is not high enough (luckily I read this in a book by chance right before I started with the muslin).

I made some more space around my hips at the back.
The back might appear a bit loose on the photo but you can believe me that I need that space to move my arms forward!
This time I tried a new method of forward shoulder adjustment, and it worked really well!

As you can see, I decided to make short sleeves anyway! Too many choices…
Another hard decision was the fabric. Not which fabric to use, but which side of it! After obsessing about wether it is "allowed" to use the wrong side of a fabric as the right side I chose to do so anyway. It was the wrong side of the fabric that drew my attention when I bought it, and it's the side that I simply like more. Which side would you have chosen? Is it ok to change sides of a fabric? Up on the photo is the right side, and down is the wrong side of the fabric:

March 11, 2014

As I was working for several weekends I did not get much sewing done in the last weeks, but this past weekend I was free from any obligations, so I spent it with sewing (yes, although the weather was great I stayed in the house sewing…)! And it was quite productive, as I finished two small projects!

The skirt is simply made from two rectangles, one for the waistband and one gathered to be the skirt. There was no pattern, I just measured my waist and went on. I added an exposed zipper at the back, my very first one. I followed this tutorial on Burdastyle and it worked very well. So I've also learned a new technique. Not bad for one week-end, isn't it?

March 7, 2014

This is from Burdastyle magazine 8/2012, made up in a printed silk fabric. And I have to say I'm really surprised how warm a silk dress can be, especially when worn with woolen tights and a thin woolen t-shirt underneath. (And although you can't see it, I'm really happy with this dress, just concentrating on the self-timer of my camera…)

The original pattern has the skirt longer in the back than in the front, but I was lazy and made my hem in an even length all around (it's so much easier to simply use the skirt marker). I also omitted the front neckline slit and added some yellow rickrack instead.

I also made the sleeves wider to make sure that they would be comfortable even with a long-sleeved tee underneath. They do feel comfortable and I can move my arms without restriction, but after wearing the dress a few times I noticed that there must be some strain at the front sleeve caps:

Which means I'll have to work on my sleeve adjustments. Although at the moment I don't have a clue where these strain lines come from. They are on both sleeves, but only at the front side, not at the back.

I did not like the ruched collar, though the dress looked a bit bland without anything, so I drafted a peter pan collar myself. I attached the collar with some snaps at the neckline facing to make it detachable for washing, which meant a bit of fiddling around, as I could not find any instructions for detachable collars at all. Please ignore the blue markings: I used some sort of magic pen to mark the positions of the snaps and forgot how to remove the markings as I threw away the packaging.

The honeycomb decoration at the hem was already in the fabric, on both sides of the selvage. Of course, an A-line skirt is not ideal to use a straight decoration boarder at the hem, but I didn't know where else to place it and decided to try it anyway. It doesn't look too crooked, I think. If it would not have worked out, my plan was to cut the dress above the honeycombs and set on a tier without decoration.